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Show I had beard it stated that pan. there were lick watchers and while sitting, on the limb of a tree would spring down on deer when they came to lick or drink the salt or brackish water. I had also heard that often when the panther was stealthilj creeping np, hunters had shot them just before the fatal spring was mnd, and he would fall nearly at tho feet of ihe hunter. As it began to grow dark, all these stories about panthars came to. my mind and I thought if they were true, the rascal might change his mind and come bock with hopes of having better luck, when all odds would bo in his favor, to make a jmealofme. Therefore I loft at once for safer quarters. As the country where I lived, Virginia, was a game country at that early day, ns soon as the leaves were off the trees in the" fall, hunting commenced in earnest and to be a good lrintor was not simply simp-ly to travel through the woods in quest of deer, hoping to find his game at haphazzafd, for it re. quires some knowledge and skill. Much depends on the state of tlio weather and much as possible with the wind blowing in the hunter's ' face, to prevent the deer from smelling the approach of the hunter. hunt-er. In w et weather wken not very cold, deer was found in the open woods on rather high ground, but if clear andvcold, they were usually usual-ly found on higher ground near the tops of t'e mountains. In cold, stormy weather, they weie mostly sheltered from the storm of what was usually called hicl This the hunters called '"laying close," and found that such days were pot good for the hunter. In rainy, warm weather aud not much wind, the deer was mainly found low-down near the bottoms. Hunters generally earned a tomahawk in a leather scabbord which was attach- ed to his belt that he wore around his hunting shirt, and when successful suc-cessful in bringing down a deer it was draged to the bottoms, the entrails en-trails removed. Two or three crotches were cut with the toma- An Incident. Shortly after the circumstance related by Young Hunter, in the last Union, he went to watch another an-other lick, and while sitting in his blind he espied a panther bounding bound-ing along with his nose near thej ground as if he whs on the track of something, but when he came to the path on which I came, he suddenly sud-denly stopped and raised his head high in the air and seemed to be looking straight at me; but wishing wish-ing make a sure shot, I waited for him to approach nearer, but all at once he wheeled and bounded away out of sight. Something he saw'had told him there was danger ahead. hawk and a hickory withe was cut with his butcher knife and made fast around the head or horns, then a suitable bush was bent down and the gamo made fast to it, and the game was then hoisted up out of the reach of wolves. It was a grand sight to a hunter to look at a buck just killed and hung up. It was amusing, sometimes, to hear-old hear-old hunters talk and toll how many they had hung up in a days hunt, describing the kind of gamo, such as the Spike buck; two and three pronged buck: the old doe;- barren doe, and towhead, meaning a young-deer young-deer not a year old. Young Hunter is now an- old man and fondly calls to mind his early-days. early-days. More anon. A. Yirg inian. |